Performed by Jacqui Armbruster (voice+viola), Tim Weiss, and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble

Composer's Note:
Notes on Becoming is a bespoke piece of music for the wonderful violist, singer, and poet Jacqui Armbruster to showcase their inimitable artistry and creativity. The piece features text written by Jacqui and is in three parts, outlining a narrative trajectory of self-exploration and acceptance. 

-Benjamin T. Martin

Poet’s Note:

“The three poems in the piece grapple with identity in different forms. I wrote them at a time when it felt like my entire life was in a painful transition- reaching the end of my undergraduate program and wondering what was going to come next, discovering my gender identity as a non-binary person, grieving the loss of a long-term relationship and wondering who I was without it. The first words I wrote were what became the ending of the piece, “to be cut wide open/ to fade to nothing/ isn’t that something?/ to be cut wide open” and it took me until the end of this project to realize that the vulnerable transition, the “becoming”, is a beautiful place to be.”

 -Jacqui Armbruster


Text by Jacqui Armbruster (2021):

I. i am

i’ve been writing in circles, trying to connect
the fading memories that have not left me yet
i’ve been piecing together clumsy patchwork dreams remembering days i thought were evergreen

i’ve been watching the world spin reaching out for something i can hold onto

'cause i’ve been a mother and i’ve been a child i’ve been in shackles and i have run wild
i’ve been a lover and i’ve teemed with hate i’ve been so patient but i cannot wait

any longer as i watch the world spin when i don’t know where i begin
or belong

i’ve been the flowers that bloom in the spring i’ve been the snow-falling on everything
i’ve been the moon and i’ve been the sun
i’ve been the world but i cannot give one

to you, you’re a mountain that i've yet to climb
you, far ahead
as i fall behind

fall out and spill over and remember when i had so little, with nothing to spend

but now i’ve seen plenty though sometimes i’m blind oh i am becoming
and maybe one day you’ll find out who
i am
i am
I am

II. blue

i awoke to see
the morning sky opening through clouded thoughts and miles of smog
i saw blue

went downstairs for a cup hoping it could pick me up but the first sip
touched my lips

and turned them blue

and there’s birds up in the sky dropping feathers as they fly
i look for red
but instead

they’re all blue

i met a boy, he took my hand and for hours i swam
in his eyes
the darkest shade of blue

he went away in search of green promised to bring some back for me and in his place
that big, empty space
all turned blue

now i sit and watch the cars
the lovers underneath the stars and as they kiss
i reminisce
about you

and i'm trying to forget
the promises you never kept try as i might
i cannot fight
that all the world is blue

III. open

a sacred and painful unfurling of all i have kept trapped within emerging with urgency
what has always been
in front of you
boiling under the surface coming into the light
and pushing through towards endless tomorrows
where joy and sorrow
are one and it is okay
to be clumsy and to
bleed and to misstep
because being is fleeting
and beautiful

(Cadenza: "on letting go")

to be cut wide open to fade into nothing isn’t that something? to be cut wide open

Notes on Becoming (2021): for amplified voice+viola solo and sinfonietta orchestra

Commissioned and performed by the IU New Music Ensemble directed by David Dzubay and conducted by Andrew Downs. Recording and Engineering by Ben Wesenberg and the IU Audio Engineering Department.

Maujem is a deep exploration into my cultural upbringing and its dissonance in my current life, and an attempt at synthesizing the two emotionally. The title and much of the musical material is drawn from an Afghan proverb that my parents repeated to me many times as a child:

موجیم کی اسودگی ما عدم ما هست
ما زنده بر انیم کی ارام نداریم

We are waves, for our being is in unrest. 
We exist to be in motion

IU NME:
Tierney McClure, flutes
Renae Dishman and Jake Pierson, Clarinets
Lauren Hallonquist, Bassoons
Terrence Perrier, Horn
Daniel Lehmann, Trumpet
Lawson Quisenberry, Trombone
Josh Catanzaro, Piano
Seare Farhat, Live Electronics/Voice
Hannah Newsome and Carl Tafoya, Percussion
Jack Bogard and Bryson Karrer, Violin
Maeve Wheelan, Viola
Jaemin Lee, Cello
Will Kline, Bass
Andrew Downs, Conductor

Maujem (موجیم) for sinfonietta and live electronics

For soprano, flute, oboe, double bass, percussion, & electronics.
 
Performed by Sharon Harms, Barry Crawford, Peggy Pearson, Greg Chudzik, Mike Truesdell, and Steve Beck. 

Conducted by Holly Druckman. 

Commissioned by the 2022 Brandeis Composers conference with support from the FROMM foundation.

hum house

𝒹𝑒𝓂𝑜::¨∆√ -𝕄ℙ𝟛.３２ＢＩＴ.𝘚𝘜𝘉𝘵-√¡∞

Performance by Olivia Nicole Brewer and Alexandre Tchaykov.

Audio by Brian Riordan

Performed as part of New Music on the Point's 2023 season.

Program note:

"Excise" is based on a journal entry I wrote in 2023 while reflecting on some of the cognitive and emotional struggles I've experienced over the past decade. So often in moments of great psychological entropy, I've found it grounding to write music that I feel is beautiful, serene, and polarized to my own thoughts and feelings. This piece is a sort of personal exercise in representing more plainly these experiences on the page in the hopes that doing so may lead to greater personal clarity and, eventually, serenity. 

"Excise" was written for New Music on the Point's 2023 concert series and was premiered by Nicholas Brewer and Alexandre Tchaykov.

Special thanks to Brian Riordan for the wonderful audio and to Olivia, Alex, and NMOP for facilitating such a meaningful collaborative experience.

Excise (2023): for piano four hands

Peter Han, soprano saxophone
Laura Garcia, alto saxophone
Kolbe Chapman, tenor saxophone
Matthew Johnson, baritone saxophone

Audio by Robbie Dunham

where we were (2023): for saxophone quartet

melody

Emiliano Gavito, flute
Adam Starkie, clarinet
Sophie Wahlmüller, viola
Christian Lozano Sedano, electric guitar

Audio by David Bird

Program Note:

This piece’s title is culled from an eponymous work by the 20th century Catalan visual artist Joan Miró. I fell in love with Miró’s style of painting during my elementary school art class. We were assigned various exercises where we had to attempt to emulate salient characteristics of certain painters, using their work as a model for how to craft our own pieces. With Miró, I had so much fun trying to recreate (admittedly inexpertly) what I saw as bizarre, alien, stick-figure like beings in these swirlingly otherworldly environments. Revisiting his work now, I am able to more deeply appreciate the sense of mystery, abstraction, and intense spirituality in these paintings—both ancient and modern-seeming all at once. And yet, I still find them deeply playful and childlike as well, full of joy and unfettered exuberance. 

In my piece, I try to capture the experience of looking at this strikingly beautiful painting for the first time and gradually taking it all in in; first, as an incredibly rich and colorful composite, then honing in on specific shapes. Because of the abstract nature of the painting’s style, the viewer is invited to entrain and re-entrain to it visually. In the same way, the piece begins by presenting all of the musical material at once in a wild set of swirls and shimmers, and gradually zooms in on specific motives and interrogates them until, at the close, the composite of all these motives are viewed in a new light.

Ladders Cross The Blue Sky In A Wheel Of Fire (2024): for Collective Lovemusic

For electronic gamelan ensemble and string quartet. Performed live at MASS MoCa during  the Bang on a Can Summer Institute 2011.

Bubblegum Grass Peppermint Field

Performed by the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Adrian Rogers.

Memoirs of Petrichor (2018)

written for the 2018 Norfolk New Music Workshop
premiered by the 2018 Norfolk Contemporary Music Ensemble in Norfolk, CT

I. "and"
II. "or"
III. "but"
IV. "if"
V. "so"

Perry Roth, sax
Brian Voelz, trumpet
YoungKyoung Lee, percussion
Miles Walter, piano
Eli Greenhoe, electric guitar
Ross Wightman, double bass

Julian Pellicano, conductor

conjunctions (2018)

Composer at Oberlin College and Conservatory.

Memoirs of Petrichor (2018)

Michelle Li